The Lamb Wins

A Guided Tour through the Book of Revelation

Richard Bewes

• Publisher: Christian Focus Publication
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781781912454

PART ONE

CHRIST IS WITH HIS CHURCH

‘But all the endeavours of men, all the emperor’s largesse and the propitiation of the gods, did not suffice to allay the scandal or banish the belief that the fire had been ordered. And so, to get rid of this rumour, Nero set up as the culprits and punished with the utmost refinement of cruelty a class hated for their abominations, who are commonly called Christians....

Besides being put to death they were made to serve as objects of amusement, they were clad in the hides of beasts and torn to death by dogs; others were crucified, others set on fire to serve to illuminate the night when daylight failed....’

Tacitus, the Roman historian

after the fire of Rome, AD 64

1

CRACKING THE CIPHER

There took place in New York last century the sale of a painting that had been lost for a hundred years. Entitled Icebergs, it had been painted by the nineteenth-century American artist Frederick Edwin Church. It finally turned up in a boys’ home in Northenden, Manchester.

The painting was dirty. Workmen had placed ladders against it, and it had been used as a dartboard. One boy had added his own signature alongside that of the artist. But when it was sold at Sotheby’s in New York, it fetched several million dollars.

An unusual event? Not entirely. It has happened before, with ancient papyri, with musical masterpieces, with porcelain, coins and books. It is, indeed, a book that we shall be considering in these pages. The book of Revelation has not been appreciated in recent years as it should. It has become strangely overlaid by the oddest assortment of views and interpretations! It has become the playground of the cults. Ordinary Christians have left it unread; turned off by the bizarre flights of fancy, by the mathematical labyrinths in which some of its readers appear to have become enmeshed.

It is worth a rediscovery.

You will not find in these pages a heavily detailed verse-by-verse commentary. There are plenty of such commentaries. Rather, we shall set out to establish some of the great landmarks in this amazing book of Revelation, to recapture the strength, the inspiration and – yes – the comfort of John’s great Apocalypse.

Apocalypse? The word is from the Greek and means simply a ‘revelation’ or ‘unveiling’. Things that would be normally hidden from us are made known in Apocalyptic writing – such as we find in the book of Daniel, or in the Revelation. Apocalyptic writing takes you behind the scenes and reveals the unseen principles that affect history – and the future. It brings hope during times of crisis; it shows the end from the beginning.

‘How otherwise could the Bible end?’ asked Fred Mitchell in his study The Lamb upon His Throne (Marshall, Morgan and Scott). ‘Supposing it ended at the Epistle of Jude? Then all that we should see would be ungodly men in their ungodly deeds to which they are committed, and the saints committed to contending for the faith once for all delivered to them. The issue in such a case might appear to be in doubt; but no, the Bible is complete, for in the last Book we see the climax of all the redemptive purposes of God.’

‘The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show his servants what must soon take place. He made it known by sending his angel to his servant John’ (Rev. 1:1).

John ... no other identification is needed! The beloved apostle, an old man now, writes down the message of the Revelation as it is given him. He is an exile, banished from Ephesus to the island of Patmos, ‘on account of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus’ (1:9). Patmos is one of a cluster of small islands off the coast of modern-day Turkey. They were ceded to Greece after the Second World War. There, on the little hill-covered island, eight miles by four, John saw out his final days. It was there, one Sunday, that he received from the risen and glorified Christ the prophecy that ultimately was to round off the books of the Bible.

Way back as a youth, I did ‘logarithms’ at school. I even passed a mathematics examination, but to this day I couldn’t tell you what logarithms were for. The columns of figures were, to me, as confusing as they were indecipherable. Some people, on approaching John’s prophecy, seem equally baffled. Is it a question of cracking a secret code? How do you interpret this amazing series of visions? A quick survey of some of the main interpretations will help us. If we can get it right now, we shall save ourselves endless confusions.

The Preterist Interpretation

Preterist – here is a technical term, derived from the Latin word praeter (‘past’). The preterist view interprets the book of Revelation as referring mainly to the past events of John’s day, in the last few years of the first century AD. The Emperor Domitian was on the throne of the Roman Empire; the persecutions of Nero’s reign had already taken place. ‘Babylon’ is a code name for ‘Rome’; and the prophecy is given to encourage the harassed Church of that time. A valid interpretation? Yes, of course; but it cannot stand alone. Does the book not have a direct bearing on the events of history that were shortly to unfold? Definitely! So maintain the supporters of another view.

The Historicist Interpretation

On this view, we are to see the great bulk of the book (once we are past the first three chapters) as a kind of panoramic view of world history, continuously unfolding. It is a history written in advance – although by now, historicists would maintain, most of the events related have taken place. A credible interpretation? Ye-es. I hesitate! The weakness of the interpretation lies in the tendency of the historicists to identify sections of the prophecy with those events of history familiar to them – usually the history of western Europe. Is this helpful and relevant to Christians struggling in other eras and in other countries? Naturally we are going to find many familiar historical patterns appearing in this study, but we must be careful not to press our interpretation into a rigid and artificial framework.

The Futurist Interpretation

This has been, and still is, popular today. It is the view that, after the first three chapters, most of the Revelation is referring to the future events near the end of time, and that most of the prophecy has yet to be fulfilled. Certainly the attraction of this approach centres in the triumphant statement of the ultimate victory of God:

‘The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he will reign for ever and ever’ (11:15).

And yet is the futurist approach enough, taken alone? Surely a good deal of the prophecy does relate to the time of the Roman Empire at the time of John, and indeed to a wider canvas altogether.

The Idealist Interpretation

Some Bible students would say, ‘Look, we may not understand all the symbols and imagery of the Revelation; let it be enough that it is wonderfully symbolic of the victory that lies at the heart of Christianity. Be encouraged, but don’t worry too much about the details.’ I can sympathize with this view, because the book of Revelation is certainly very encouraging with its message of triumph in the face of adversity. And yet, to be of genuine practical help, should not the imagery be anchored to real situations and concrete events?

We would surely welcome aspects of every one of these approaches! But is there a view that encompasses something of all four? I believe there is.

The Parallelist Interpretation

A friend of mine told me how he read the book of Revelation for the first time. He had no aids, no commentaries to guide him. He simply opened at chapter one, and began reading. After a while he said to himself, ‘This doesn’t read like a continuous sequence. The writer keeps going back on his tracks. He seems to stop, and then begin to cover virtually the same ground all over again. And yet ... each time he resumes, it’s almost as though he sees the same familiar picture through different coloured spectacles.’ My friend read on. When he got to the end, he reflected. ‘The book of Revelation is basically presenting one picture. With every new section a fresh facet, a new colour, is added until in the end I’ve got the complete picture. It’s like the process that goes into the making up of a picture in a colour magazine. You start with one layer of colour, then put in the next; the blue, the red, the yellow – until in the end the whole thing is complete.’

When my friend told me of his discovery, I realized that, with no one telling him, he had been pursuing what Bible specialists call the Resumptive interpretation of the book. The same identical picture is being ‘resumed’ repeatedly, albeit from different angles and viewpoints. Others call it the Parallelist Interpretation. We are reading the sections one after another – but they do not actually follow each other as a chronological sequence. They are parallel to each other. Sometimes we are looking at the picture from the viewpoint of the Church. Sometimes it is a heavenly view that is projected. Sometimes the picture is coloured by the theme of judgment, sometimes by that of victory.

Always the same picture, the picture being ... what, precisely? It seems to be the whole of this Church age that is basically in view – the entire era stretching between Christ’s first and second coming – the era in which John and his readers were living, the age in which you and I are situated. These visions are given to strengthen the Christian of every century against the day when his own world seems to go up in flames. We learn from this book of the patterns that we can expect history to reveal; we allow its throbbing message of conflict and ultimate triumph to colour our own distinctive Christian world-view; we learn to see the end from the beginning; we develop our own certain expectation of Christ’s return and victory, and shape our lives and our service accordingly. The preterist, historicist, futurist and idealist views are all included.

It is time for us to examine this wonderful prophecy, and to share a little in what John experienced one Sunday, on lonely, hilly Patmos.

For your reading

Revelation 1:1-8.

2

DON’T BE AFRAID!

It was Sunday – 5th October to be precise. The young Ugandan school teacher was in a rebellious mood. He had stamped out of church earlier that day, enraged by the Christian message he had heard. The rest of the Sunday he had spent drinking. Just then a friend rode up on a bicycle, and spoke to him.

‘When I was in church today, something happened to me. God has forgiven me the wrongs I have done. Jesus has become my Saviour!’ Apologising for various misdeeds, the friend rode off into the village.

It was like a thunderclap to the school teacher. For his best friend to desert him in his rebellion – to change his mind about God and about Jesus Christ!... It was too much. Years later he told me of how the encounter on the road had opened his eyes.

‘I made for my room. I was kneeling, seeking forgiveness, seeking restoration. I began to cry to God, and my eyes were opened to his love on the Cross. I realized that the death of Christ was because of me. Then it was as if the Lord said, “This is also how much I love you.”

‘I felt a tremendous liberation. I had been running away from God’s love – and now this freedom! I jumped to my feet. I remember saying, “Lord, give me permission for one more week ... just one more week ... to live – and I will tell everyone I meet about this!”’

Festo Kivengere – for that was his name – rushed outside. A woman was passing by, a hundred yards away.

‘Stop! Stop!’ shouted the young man. ‘Jesus Christ has come my way today!’ The woman tossed her head and turned away. Drunk! And on a Sunday!

But it was the beginning of a new life for Festo Kivengere. Later he was to become a great evangelist in Africa, and a bishop in the Church of Uganda. Everything had become alive on that Sunday evening, when the vision of Christ crucified and alive for ever had come into focus.

Whether it comes through normal or super-normal channels, it is – ultimately – a vision, a concept of Christ himself, that gives power to New Testament Christianity. Take that away, and we are left with the dead bones of a dry morality, devoid of comfort, and powerless to change anything. But the book of Revelation reminds us that Christianity is full of comfort – and has power to change the world! As in Festo’s case, it was a Sunday when John caught his glimpse of glory:

‘Among the lampstands was someone “like a son of man”.... His head and hair were white like wool, as white as snow, and his eyes were like blazing fire.... His face was like the sun shining in all its brilliance’ (1:13-16).

Here, surely was a sight that John had never seen before – or had he? Wait a moment ... he had!

‘After six days Jesus took Peter, James and John with him and led them up a high mountain, where they were all alone. There he was transfigured before them. His clothes became dazzling white, whiter than anyone in the world could bleach them ...’ (Mark 9:2, 3).

Way back on that mount of Transfiguration, before the death and resurrection of Christ had taken place, the three disciples had been privileged with a preview of the Kingdom – in miniature. They witnessed something very like the vision that had confronted Daniel hundreds of years earlier, a vision closely associated with someone described as ‘like a son of man’ (Dan. 7:9-14). What did it all mean for the exiled apostle on Patmos?

Christ is speaking to his Church

‘I knew it was Jesus,’ said the young Arab. He had happened to be in Kuwait...

Table of contents

• Testimonial
• Title
• Indicia
• Contents
• Foreword
• Introduction
• Part One: Christ is with His Church
• Part Two: God is on the throne
• Part Three: The trumpets are sounding
• Part Four: The victory of the Lamb
• Part Five: The overthrow of evil
• Part Six: The new order
• Also available from Christian Focus
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